Myliobatoidei
by EXNativo
Summary: It could be reincarnation, or visions of a past life. Maybe it was divine intervention, or something from the other side of the afterlife. Either way, I'm here now, a colourless existence that somehow shines in a vibrant world. Watch out. No, seriously, watch out, or I might accidentally steal your Semblance too. Not a very serious story. OC-SI.
1. Chapter 1

**I don't know where this will end up going. I am a very sporadic writer who only put this idea down into words because I haven't written anything since October last year. I don't know what will happen or how long my motivation will last, but I hope you all enjoy the ride with me.**

* * *

"_Waahhhh…"_

You know, some say that the universe is infinite.

The universe encompasses all we will ever know. An untold amount of planets, given life by the happenstance of countless stars. For all we knew, it could have been the lie we told ourselves every day. Nobody wanted to feel alone, existing through the whims of coincidence and odds so infinitesimal that they never be repeated anywhere else, for as long as there is existence.

"_Waaaaaaahhhhhh..."_

Maybe it would be better to say that the universe was _potentially _infinite. Just to cover all my bases. Though that would then bring into question the aspect of humanity's limited viewpoints, and the meaning of the words we speak in contrast to the concepts they're supposed to represent…

Where was I going with this again?

"_W-w-w-waaaaaaahhhh!"_

Oh, right.

Potentially infinite planets. Potentially infinite circumstances.

And what's the first thing I hear upon waking up from what feels like an eternal nap?

Some little fucker crying in my ear.

Spectacular.

Alright, focus. Focus on the here and now. My eyes were already closed, but I clenched them tighter as I tried to remember. Remember… what was my name again?

There had been an L… something to do with an L. I was born in… somewhere?

That was worrisome. My arm felt like a soaked noodle as I flailed it around, fighting against the world itself in my attempt to plant it somewhere and raise myself up. Eventually it came to a rest, flopped down beside me uselessly- and landing in something warm and slimy.

The crying stopped for a moment, before starting up again. Muffled, with the vibrations running along my arm.

Okay, one, fucking ew. Two, apparently my fist was small enough to fit inside a baby's mouth. At least I thought it was a baby. Shit, was it even human?

_Choke, you little bastard!_

Seriously, where the fuck was I? And why was my lower back hurting so damn much?

"Waaah-!"

"Do you ever shut the fuck up!?"

I'd tried to snap. It wouldn't have helped the situation any, yelling at a crying child wasn't going to make them quiet. But I was tired, hungry, my eyes wouldn't open, I could barely move my body any, and my voice had sounded to my own ears like an infant gurgling around a tongue that they didn't yet have the strength to properly maneuver.

...Shit.

I just realised…

I'm…

...Really tired.

**XxX**

"What are we going to do?"

It wasn't the words that woke me, so much as the sharp crack of skin against skin. Without thinking or coordination, I flopped my hand back over the mouth of the brat beside me, right as he was gearing up to start screaming again.

Partly because I wanted to hear what was happening, mostly because he was really starting to shit me with his attitude.

"We!?" It was a male voice this time, somewhat deep but still carrying a nasally quality that I would have made fun of, if I could speak. "You told me this wouldn't happen- couldn't happen!"

"I-I didn't think-"

"NO, YOU DIDN'T THINK!" A second loud crack echoed through the room. "A FREAK'S BLOOD RUNS THROUGH YOUR VEINS, AND YOU BELIEVED YOU COULD _KEEP IT_ FROM ME!?"

"My grandfather was not a frea-!"

I'd been expecting something louder when the female voice cut off suddenly. The noise was quieter this time, mixed in with a grunt that could have been either surprise or pain. Probably both, if I had to guess.

"Perhaps this behaviour should be thought through, Sir."

Well, this was… unfortunate.

I tried to open my eyes enough to see around me. I wanted it so bad that I was hoping that it would become reality through sheer force of will alone. It just wasn't happening for me, though. All I knew about the outside world was the sounds assaulting my ears and the soft blanket that had been draped over me.

"That _thing _is not my son!" The sheer, simmering rage in that statement was enough to make me uneasy. Even after everything I'd ever seen or know… what had I seen or known? "I will not have a disgusting creature be my legacy!"

The guy beside me gurgled again. I turned a bleary gaze upon what little I could see of him, trying to map out any similarities.

Loud, obnoxious, and probably a jackass? Yeah, that sounded close enough.

"Makes sense they'd regret giving birth to you, mate."

Again, my voice came out as barely anything other than a high-pitched gurgle. The impact of the words was lost as a result, but the atmosphere in the room swerving back towards suffocating was hard to ignore.

"Get rid of it."

What?

"What!?"

"I told you I would not allow something like that in my home." Thundering footsteps came to a stop beside where I was lying. Instinct told me to reach out for a hug. Intelligence told me to stop fucking moving and pray that I wasn't seen. "Leave it in a bush, throw it in the river, I don't care. Get it out of my sight."

Silence.

Absolute and utter silence.

Until…

Footsteps, soft and agonisingly slow, made their way towards me. Any of the good humour I'd managed to hold onto up until that point withered and died as I looked upon the small shape beside me.

This was fucked up. This was absolutely fucked up. What was I supposed to do? In my current circumstances, what _could _I do? I may not have known or liked the kid, but there was no good reason to just-!

Two soft hands wrapped around my midsection. My train of thought sputtered and derailed off its tracks as I was lifted away from the wondrous blanket and into the freezing air.

"I'm sorry," that female voice murmured in my ear, almost too low for me to hear.

Oh hell the fuck no.

"No! Put me down! Take the other one, he's got less to live for!" I want to say I struggled. That I put up any semblance of a fight. Unfortunately, with my noodle limbs and dulled senses, there was nothing I could do but cry out. I struggled _to _struggle. "Do you know who I am? Do you!? Wait, shit, do you? I'm kind of drawing a blank here."

We continued like that for a while, her doing her utmost to avoid detection and me doing my utmost to draw all the attention in the world towards myself. My various calls of "kidnapper" went unanswered, nobody seemed to give it any mind when I started throwing accusation of sexual deviancy around, and the last thing I tried… let's just say that it was a stressful situation for all involved and that I regret ever mentioning it.

That field of potatoes may have inspired something, but that's all in the past and we can move on with our lives.

Eventually, the sounds of civilisation were fading. Voices and metallic clanging became woodland creatures and running water. I'd run out of things to complain about and was now just sulking, my arms crossed as best they could and my mouth still avidly attempting to bite through the hand that had been silencing me for the last stretch of the journey.

However, because nothing today seems to want to go my way, I didn't appear to possess teeth. Whatever, who gives a shit, not like they were all that useful for me anyway.

Damn it all. I miss my teeth.

Finally, my ride came to a stop. A great, shuddering sob ran through the woman as she placed something down, and lowered me inside of it. Immediately, my hands were pawing at the sides, running across… wicker? A wicker cylinder that went up higher than I could reach, right next to the sounds of crashing waves…

Oh you have got to be shitting me.

"I'm so sorry." Damn, she sounded really torn up about it too. Maybe if I was lucky, the wicker basket would spring a leak while I was still within sight of her, and she'd watch me drown. Wouldn't that be a fantastic way to end a thrilling evening?

A hand settled on my cheek, the thumb running softly across my closed eye. I seized up, barely feeling the other had that settled on my shoulder.

A tear landed on my chin, and even through inoperable eyelids, I could see that it was glowing.

"For it is in resilience that we achieve repentance." Oh no you don't, I'm not being cursed like this before you chuck me out like yesterday's garbage. "Through this, we become a paragon of strength and safety to encompass all."

The glow was getting brighter. I tried to squirm, to get some distance between myself and whatever the hell I was being held by, to no avail. It felt like my body was calling for it, like the light was sinking through my skin and filling me up inside.

It was hardly a pleasant sensation, to say the least.

"Infinite in love and unbound by calamity."

The light disappeared suddenly, seeming to take with it all the sounds in the area. I couldn't hear the water anymore, couldn't hear the wind whistling through the leaves over the heavy thumping of my own heart. I couldn't tell what, but there was _something_, something inside my body that felt foreign and defiling and _wrong_, pushing and pulsing against my skin.

It wanted out. I wanted it out, but there was nothing I could do about it.

"I release your soul, and by my heart... beg forgiveness."

I was too tired to really do much of anything as the basket was gently pushed away from the shore. A deep exhaustion seemed to have settled into my very bones, but it wasn't really physical. Nor was it mental, otherwise by this point this body would have likely succumbed and gone back to sleep.

No, it felt almost… spiritual? Like my soul had been kicked in the nuts by a mule.

Ah well. Death would await me soon, unless someone managed to fish my dumb ass out of this river. All I could do now was lie here, maybe try to shift around so my tail wasn't quite so uncomfortable, and then wait for-

WAIT TAIL WHAT THE FU-

**XxX**

I don't know when people start remembering the shit that goes on in their life.

There were some things that would stick with me, things that I could almost recall if I closed my eyes and concentrated. Occasionally I would see a flicker of light, or the glowing eyes of a monster for a moment before they blinked away. There was fire, there were the crashing waves of an ocean, and there was even a sword the likes of which I don't think I would have been able to imagine… while sober.

I grew, somehow. There was no chance in hell that I could have told you who was taking care of me. All I know is that I didn't die of starvation or dehydration until I could get my legs underneath my ass and hunt food and water for myself. Those big ugly wolves don't make for a nice meal, by the way. Fuckers always seem to melt away before I can cook them, and no way would I be eating that mangy coat raw.

Maybe someone took care of me. That sword would jump to the forefront of my mind whenever I found the time to sleep. There were flashes of other things, too, but they felt… fictional.

I would see a world with an intact moon. A world of technological marvel, where people were happy. I saw a world free of monsters, and that was how I knew it couldn't be real. Monsters were everywhere.

It didn't matter that I knew a language that I shouldn't. It didn't matter that I even knew what a language _was_. Those early days, the days that were lost to me, echoed nothing but misery.

But, good tidings abound! For the world around me may be shit, but a light shone in the darkness! For all that had happened while I was still a hapless infant with nary a say in the matter, I had at least lived long enough to actually remember something for the rest of my life!

At around the age of four, I killed a man.

To be fair, I wasn't willing to take all the blame for the man suddenly coming down with a severe case of not being alive. In fact, I was the victim in all of this, and that is the story I will continue to tell until they find the body and I am forced to flee the country.

I'd been in My Place. I called it My Place because it was the most fitting descriptor I could come up with. I'd not really built anything that could be considered a house, and it would just depress me if I started thinking of it as my home.

My Place was just a clearing in what was otherwise very thick forestland. Some of the tree trunks that surrounded it were too wide for me to reach my tiny arms from side to side. I knew, because on some of the lonelier nights, I'd been desperate enough for a hug to try.

I didn't have anywhere too spectacular to sleep. If I wasn't lying in a tree with my tail anchoring me to a branch, I'd just crawl into one of the bushes that didn't have thorns. In the middle of it was a fire pit, constructed out of what few rocks my likely malnourished body could push and whatever chunk of tree was unfortunate enough to yield to my fearsome toddler strength.

Hardly what could be called living conditions, but it was literally all I had.

The man didn't show up like the monsters normally would, poking his nose through the foliage and sniffing the air. I'd learned very early on to climb one of the opposite trees if I heard something like that happening. No, instead he just appeared right beside me, staring down at me while I watched the clouds and wondered what I was going to do with my life.

The faintest whisper of wind rushed through My Place, rustling the leaves and ruffling my unkempt hair. The man didn't seem to take any notice of it, just smiling down at me as though he hadn't just popped out of thin air.

It was a nice expression. It drew a lot of attention to his raggedy appearance and yellow teeth. I smiled back, even though I was already rolling to the side and climbing to my feet. Maybe I just wanted to show off how my time in the sun had ruined my own personal hygiene, or what little I could have had in the first place while wearing what was essentially ferns. We could bond over that, at least.

"Hey, kid." Oh, look at that, he spoke a language I could understand. That was… lucky. "You lost or something?"

The sinister glint in his eye told me he must have been thinking about the copious amounts of danger I was in, by being out here all on my lonesome. Geez, what a swell guy. It was nice to know there were still a few good people out there.

"Nah, this is My Place."

I swept my hand in a grandiose manner, hoping the exhibition of my exceedingly humble abode would distract from the fact that my voice had very obviously not been used for a while. It would have been terrible if he thought I was weird, he was the first person I'd seen out there!

"Heh, nice place you got, kid." I beamed, my tail wagging behind me happily. He thought My Place was nice! We're in, boys! "Do you wanna see somewhere even better?"

Do I want to see something bet- "hell the fuck yeah I wanna see something better!"

Huh, now he was licking his lips and loosening his belt… Damn, this must have been one hell of a place if this was his reaction to it.

The man chuckled once, a deep sound that almost vibrated off the air. Then, in another rustle of wind and leaves, he'd vanished again. I was about to call out to him, to let him know in very polite terms that he'd forgotten to bring me along, when something heavy landed on my tail and I was almost thrown off my feet.

I turned around, ready to give whatever had decided to attack me a piece of my mind, and was suddenly met with the man's wide, disbelieving eyes. The rock he'd been holding over his head, taken from my fire pit without me ever realising, slid out of his hands. With nowhere else to go, it cracked down on top of his skull, and he went down like a sack of shit.

Some light trivia about my tail; the thing was a good few feet long, about as thin as my wrist the entire way. The end tapered off into two very distinct shapes; the stretch of it that looked somewhat natural ended with a small fin, and elevated off that was a spire of what I could only assume was bone.

I had always been convinced that the thing had a mind of its own. It would wag when I was feeling happy, and lash out something was behind me. Without fail, it would always know, and it going through the eyes of some big wolves before I even heard them coming were some of the few foggy memories I had.

Something purple slid along my tail, flickering as though it couldn't decide if it wanted to be there or not. I watched, entranced, as it lightened along the way, finally settling on a pale sort of gray once it had reached my back. The same colour as the light that would always flash whenever one of the monsters managed to hit me, strange...

With a final flash of intermingled gray and purple that had me blinking away stars, the man slowly slid to the ground, his weight being a bit too much for my tail to handle. He rolled off to the side, bouncing his nose off the rock once more for good measure, and giving me an unimpeded view of the hole in his chest.

Something dripped off my tail's bone spire. I glanced down; it was red. Kinda like the stuff that was dripping from the man's chest and mouth, now that I got a good look at it…

"Uh, excuse me?" I nudged the man with a toe. The small movement made his head slide off the rock and land, face first, into the ant nest that I'd been avoiding ever since I'd established My Place. "Are we still going to that better place? Hello?"

No response. I sighed, looking back into the clouds. They may have changed shape and drifted away before, but they were always there when I needed them the most.

Unlike _some people_.

I kicked the man one last time, just to be sure, and rolled backwards until I lost my balance and landed onto a tuft of grass. What a tease.

I'd really wanted to see what was so good about this place, too-

With a near-silent whisper of wind and the slight crunch of freshly fallen leaves, I vanished from the clearing.


	2. Chapter 2

**Unbeta'd. Will address any potential errors later in the morning. I say later because it's 2AM for me, oops.**

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_Present day_

**Woosh.**

"Hmm… nope, too cold."

**Woosh.**

"Too hot! Way too hot! Crap, is this Hell!?"

**Woosh.**

_Splash._

"_Kyahhh! PERVERT!" _

"Oh, shit, sorry!"

_Slam!_

"Mel, are you alright!? I heard screami- _**WHAT THE FUCK!?**_"

**Woosh.**

"I wants you to take 'im out back and shoot 'im in the fucking hea… who are you!?"

"Uhh…"

"What are yous waiting for!? Kill 'im!"

"Eep!"

**Woosh.**

Slowly, I glanced around, idly throwing away the few bullets I'd had to catch before they could, you know, kill detonated when they hit the ground, Flame Dust discharging its energy the moment it became unstable, but I was already walking further down the alleyway and out of their range before that could happen.

Being shot at wasn't what I would consider fun. Necessary, perhaps, when I ended up somewhere I really shouldn't be, but that was a risk I had to take when it came to my first pilfered Semblance. The damn thing was hard enough to control on a good day, let alone when I had next to no idea of where I wanted to end up.

Still, this was good enough for now. If I ignored the terrible appearance of my immediate surroundings and focused on the tall buildings I could see in the distance, then I was probably in one of this world's more bustling cities.

If the smell was anything to go by, then this was the shitty part of town. Heh, I'm funny.

...Time to leave, then. I hadn't gone on a global-spanning trip just to end up chilling beside a dumpster. By my estimate, I was somewhere in my late teen years; about time to find some gainful employment and settle somewhere that didn't have branches.

You know, I think I would really miss the trees and fresh air. Already I could tell the difference, the way the atmosphere seemed hazier with the cloying stench of used Dust.

What I would _not _miss, on the other hand, was the abundance of crazy people whom all just seemed to _love _committing suicide-by-tail. Because gee fucking whizz were there a lot of them out there.

**XxX**

_Southern Menagerie, 7 years after prologue_

It had been a few years since I'd disappeared from that forest clearing. A few years since I'd given up on looking for the man and the meager belongings I'd left behind.

A few years since the rest of the world had been opened up to me in what was perhaps the most abrupt way possible.

Many times, I'd watched the sun sink below the horizon and the moon rise to take its place. Usually, the nights where I could slow down and appreciate the stars followed the days that were calm, maybe even peaceful. For the first time in a while, I hadn't used my teleportation for evil.

Meaning, I hadn't randomly teleported to who knows where, grabbed something that didn't look like it'd been nailed down, and proceeded to tear ass out of there. That was how I'd gotten my nifty new backpack. And the nifty new gun I had strapped to my back. And the nifty sandwich that I was munching on.

...Okay, so maybe I wasn't being entirely honest about the not stealing thing. In my defense, _let me live._

I'd just been about to finish the sandwich and was reaching into my stolen backpack for a maybe-totally-definitely stolen bottle of water when my path was suddenly blocked. Some clown, way taller and older than I could ever hope to be in that instant, had leapt out of the bushes on the side of the little forest path I'd found.

He wasn't _actually _a clown. He didn't have the make-up or the tiny car or the red nose. He _did _have the scare factor, though, held above his head in the form of a sword that might have been bigger than I was.

Man, how exciting. I hadn't been to a circus since my birth.

I was expecting him to demand I give him my backpack. Maybe he wanted me to give him my gun, seeing as his sword actually looked kinda shitty. What I was really hoping to give him was a piece of my mind, seeing as he made me drop the last bite of my sandwich.

So I'm sure you could understand my confusion when all he did was scream unintelligibly and charge at me with all the grace of a drunk toddler. That confusion drained away quite rapidly in that moment, leaving me a bit torn for an appropriate response.

Naturally, I did what anybody would do. _Grabbed the gun from my back, I flicked the safety off with a graceful twirl and settled the weight into my palms-_

No, I fucking ran. Dude might have brought a sword to a gunfight, but I didn't know how to shoot this space-age, glowing piece of shit! I only picked it up because it looked cool!

It took all of one heartbeat for me to decide that this wasn't how it was going to be. I threw my ass in a semicircle and pumped my stumpy legs for all they were worth. I may have screamed, though I am proud to announce, I only came _extremely close_ to pissing myself.

Why didn't I just teleport myself out of there, you may ask? Well, the answer is actually very simple. _You try thinking rationally when you're faced with a doped up member of the round table. I'll wait._

Unfortunately, as I was but a child, I had not yet grown powerful enough to properly defy physics. Objects in motion will fuck you up if you don't move out of the way, what goes up must come down, and the power of irony trumps all else in the universe. That was the true law of the wild.

I managed to take two entire steps before the steaming pile of man meat reached my poor, defenseless body. The sword sailed over my head and was imbedded in a tree before I could even blink. There was a wet gurgle from above me, a sharp tug on my tail, and suddenly I was tipping forward with about three times the body weight that I once had.

My groans of pain and foul language was muffled quite effectively by the dirt I was being forced to chew on. My momentum had taken me for a bit of a spin, thankfully over a small collection of rocks and into a patch of grass. My back hurt because of the stupid asshole that was still lying on it, but overall I didn't really have much to complain about when it came to this landing.

It was about that time that I remembered that I could teleport. I lifted my head out of the furrow it'd dug for itself, catching a final ashen glow from the corner of my eye as I did so, and propelled myself towards a high branch.

I could have sworn I heard the guy grunt something about aura as I went. Huh, Aura, that was a fitting name...

Aura blazed over my body as soon as I landed. Quite literally, it blazed. I almost fell right out of the tree when my entire body lit up with sparks, only keeping enough clarity of mind through the blind panic of OHSHITFIRE to see that they weren't damaging me or my clothes in any way. My Aura was healing the small injuries quite nicely, and providing a lovely bit of warmth that was certainly welcome.

Then a few sparks landed on a bit of dry wood, and I quickly wiped the blood off my tail and skedaddled before the conflagration could swallow me entirely.

If anyone asks, it wasn't me.

**XxX**

_Midland Sanus, 3 years later_

Okay but for real this time, it wasn't me.

All I'd wanted to do was find a warmer climate after spending six months isolated in the far north. I'd even counted the days and everything.

There was nobody who could accidentally kill themselves that far up north. There were some horrific monsters that had mutated to suit the extreme cold, and more often than not one of the mountains in the distance had snored and rolled over, but otherwise I'd been entirely isolated.

Just the way I like it.

This was going to be my first foray into the actual human world in half a year. It was just my luck that I'd managed to find probably the only village in the history of the planet that had ever been _this _on fire.

Unbearable would have been an understatement. Hell would have worked well for a pseudonym. The flames didn't roar so much as they _oozed_, coating everything in a layer of reds and oranges that could have been physical for how densely packed they were.

Wooden beams were skipping the phase of being on fire, the few I could see disintegrating to ashes immediately. The stone pathway beneath my feet was beginning to melt and curl at the edges. Only one house was still standing, and that was only because the flames seemed to be actively avoiding it.

Now, when faced with what felt like the inside of a furnace, many a normal person probably would have turned their tail around and warped back up to the great tundras that they'd come from. I, on the other hand, did not require a reason to do something incredibly stupid.

And even if I did, then I would just say that I wanted to. There, now I had an excuse and everything. I reiterate; _let me live._

I moved at a snail's pace towards the house. Every step was hardly more than touching the ground a few inches ahead of me, and then me precariously balancing until I found another square millimeter of space that would not immediately consume me in flames.

I danced the deadly dance of death, Aura coating my body and showering the ground with even more sparks. Usually, I could temper down the flow until it was just a thin sheen, thus stopping it from clashing against itself and setting everything around me on fire. Unfortunately, that level of concentration wasn't something I could really achieve when crawling through what felt like an active volcano.

Besides, it wasn't like there was much left to destroy. I was far more concerned with keeping my tail intact, especially considering the bastard seemed to be doing its utmost to end up in whatever patch of fire looked the hottest.

By some act of divine intervention, I managed to keep my balance all the way to the front of the building. Crouching down against one of the standing walls - and withdrawing a heartbeat later when my skin started to sizzle, fucking ow - I peered in through one of the windows, doing my best to gauge just what the fuck I would be looking at.

Curious I may have been, having people trapped inside was a real possibility. Warping in directly could have been an option, if I wanted to risk coming face to face with either a wall of flames or the person responsible.

I was curious and maybe a little bit stupid, but not confident.

"I'm so sorry…"

Well hello there.

The voice was aged, feeble from either the passing years or the massive fucking extinction event happening around us. Decision made for me, I pushed the front door open… and right off its massacred hinges.

Oops.

Stepping over the useless lump of charred wood that had just given away my arrival about as effectively as an intro song, I crept further into the house, taking extra care to avoid the pockets of burning ouchies wherever they were present.

This...seemed off somehow. The house had looked mostly intact from the outside, but the inside had been ravaged just as effectively as anywhere else. Fire raged, having already destroyed most of the kitchen I was walking through and a hefty portion of the second floor, if the brief view up the staircase was anything to go off. Yet, there was a defined border to where things were burning, almost like… a radius.

"My poor baby… Oh, I'm so sorry..."

I would have pressed my back against the wall, if the damn thing wasn't approaching supernova levels of hot. Instead, I poked my head around the closest doorway, looking past a dining table that was still set for a single person and at the old man that was sitting on an almost desecrated couch. His back was hunched, head bowed, and even if I couldn't see the tears leaking around his hands and dripping from his face, his heaving shoulders made it obvious that he was crying.

I approaching, slowly, ready to blink halfway around the world at the first sign of trouble. The man took no notice, even while the floorboards creaked beneath my feet and I got close enough to get a glimpse over his shoulder.

I ignored the knife resting at his feet almost as easily as I ignored my own problems in life.

He had something on his lap. It was large, though nowhere near big enough to be weighing him down. I leant over further, trying to keep as much distance between us as I could, and blinked down at the family that was smiling up at me.

It was a photo album.

The man shook, and despite the danger we were still in, I narrowed my eyes for a closer look. Some of the photos included a beautiful lady, more still framed a handsome man, and most in some way included a young girl. All three were happy, frolicking through the trees or holding hands on a picnic blanket.

Their smiles shone brighter than the simple jewellery the mother wore, or the buckles keeping the kid's shoes together. They were young, a new family, their contentedness for life visible through coloured and shaded filters.

I shot a glance at the old man; yep, the jawline and wedding ring matched.

Where were his wife and child?

What had happened?

"Sir." He didn't seem to take any notice of me, beyond shaking his head once. "Sir, we need to leave, now."

That's when I made my biggest mistake of the evening.

I gently lay a hand on one of the man's shoulders.

I froze as the man's hand fell away from his face, a single amber eye glaring at me through the eerie glow of the flames. Tears had run tracks down his cheek and still swam in his eye, but that simple gaze was still the scariest thing I'd ever seen in this life. Then his gaze fell to the floor, and I remembered how to breathe.

"Forgive an old man, for his mistakes and cowardice."

I caught the glint the moment his hand started to move. How I hadn't realised he'd picked something up, I couldn't tell you.

I should have intervened. I think I was trying to before I even realised what he was doing. Despite everything, the vigilance I liked to imagine I had or the reflexes born from a life in the wild, I wasn't quick enough to intercept it.

The man shuddered once, a pained gurgle escaping his throat. He fell away from the couch, his hands slackening on the way down and relinquishing their grasp on the object he'd just shoved into his gut.

"Are you fucking kidding me?"

Outside, the fire roared. If it was a living being, I would have equated the noise and general feeling to bloodlust. The fact that it was already converging on the house and pressing against the windows didn't help that assessment.

The glow of Aura was already fading as I yanked my tail out of the man's stomach. As much as I would have liked to sterilize it in the flames, I didn't like my chances of getting out again if it they managed to claim me.

The windows shattered, showering the room with glass. The sweet release of death loomed from all angles.

I grabbed the photo album before getting the fuck out of there.

It didn't feel right to leave it to burn.

**XxX**

_Outside the Kingdom of Vacuo, 2 years later_

There was something beautiful about deserts.

Sure, I'd fallen over more than once after I'd started my trek across the dunes, and yes, there were times where I'd begun to regret everything leading my life in this direction. It'd been two weeks ago when I'd set off from a small settlement tucked into the side of a mountain, my backpack still laden down with the containers of water and food they'd given me upon learning of my plans.

Really, all I'd done while there was kill a few of those ugly wolf and bear things. They must have been removed enough to think that a small herd of them was actually a problem; all their teeth and claws did was tickle.

Ah well, not my problem if they wanted to throw away all their supplies on a stranger. A stranger who had quite literally shown up out of the blue and declared his intentions to cross the desert on foot.

I couldn't help it. Like I said, there was just something beautiful about deserts. I'd only seen one, when I was a few thousand feet up in the sky, testing out the vertical limitations of my teleportation and the approximate distance from the tops of the clouds where the air got impossible to breathe. It'd been a speck, almost impossible to distinguish as anything other than a large brown stain surrounded by greens and blues, but even that high up, to me, it felt like home.

Considering I'd been in a forest for as long as I could remember, I didn't know where the fuck that feeling came from. Maybe that was just something else from that past life I was almost certain I'd lived.

It would explain why, even though I was hacking sand out of my lungs and freezing my ass off at night, the heat didn't really bother me any. If anything, I was actually finding time to enjoy the sensation of sparks dancing across my skin as I let my Aura out full force. The few feet radius of clear air around me as a result was just a bonus.

I was in the middle of nowhere, walking unimpeded through a sandstorm with nary any protective clothing, almost glassing the sand at my feet with the heat my body was giving off. And I was more at peace than I could ever remember being.

Of course, that should have been the first sign that something was going to go wrong.

The first and only warning I got was the a terrible smell wafting through the air. It reminded me of that burning village, or the few seconds I'd once been dumb enough to teleport into a storm cloud. It was a bet I'd made against myself, and damn it, I'd fucking won.

Still, something in my gut, and in my brain, was telling me that this was definitely not the place to be. Running on instinct more than anything else, I threw myself backwards, and fell out of space-time behind the sand dune I'd passed over three minutes ago.

A cataclysmic _**BOOM **_shook the ground as I landed. I pressed my hands over my ears, though it didn't do much to drown out the noise as the wind howled. Despite my eyes being clenched shut and my face being pushed into the sand, I was still blinking away spots when I shakily climbed to my feet and glanced out over to where I'd been standing.

Huh… there wasn't much in the ways of a sand dune anymore. Most of the space seemed to have been taken up by a jagged sculpture of some kind, sparkling with all the colours of the rainbow in the setting sun. I squinted at it for a moment, before nodding to myself in resolution; yep, that looked fucking bizarre.

I was gonna poke it.

In a stunning display of the literal opposite of survival instincts, I popped back to where I'd been standing, running a hand over the surface of the structure. It looked even stranger up close, all sharp points and random curves. Like an enormous map of the human nervous system.

Entranced, I moved around to the other side, keeping my hand against the heated contours as I went.

"You're still alive?"

I jumped at the voice, the first one I'd heard in a while that didn't belong to me. Whirling around, my arms pinwheeled through several martial art stances that I'd never actually learned and had only defaulted to because there probably wasn't anyone in the desert who knew kung-fu. The hope was they'd find my floundering so hilariously pathetic that they wouldn't try to attack me, for fear of feeling bad about bullying. The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.

I was met with nothing but sand, sand, and more sand. Oh, and the statue-type thing, after I'd made a full rotation.

Naturally, I came to the most logical conclusion.

"Are… are you my conscience?"

"Up here, dumbass."

Now, when you're standing beside the only tall structure in the area and somebody tells you to look up, you're obviously going to default to the structure. I stepped away from its reflective surface and glanced towards the top; nothing.

I was about to make a comment about me being the dumbass when the voice didn't know what the fuck 'up' meant, when something odd caught the corner of my eye. Most of the colours I could imagine were swirling around the statue with each new angle I looked at it, but there was something that didn't change, even while my gaze roamed over it.

Slowly, I turned around, and stared up at the man that was standing over me. A fair distance away, on what seemed the be thin fucking air.

There… really wasn't much I could say about him. Trying to make out his features was an impossibility with the cloak and hood he was wearing, and from the distance and angle it was hard to guess just how tall he was. His voice has hopelessly muffled by the cloth over his face; if it wasn't for the fact that I'd always had superb hearing, there wasn't much of a chance I would have known he was there.

He made no move, just floating there with his head tilted down. If he really was looking at me, then it was anybody's guess how he could actually see.

My eyes, sharper than they had any right to be, caught the flicker of movement in the air beneath his feet. Given our surroundings, it wasn't difficult to guess what it was. A few sand particles were swirling furiously in a constant pattern, never falling to the ground despite how erratic their movements were.

_He was standing on the wind._

"Hi there!" I decided on the nice and friendly approach, waving a hand enthusiastically. "Crazy weather today, huh!?"

The air around me suddenly got very cold. Having an idea of where this was going, I reappeared a stone's throw to the left, and glanced over at the massive stalagmite that had erupted out of the sand. Or was it a stalactite? I was never very good at remembering the difference.

It had been aimed at my heart, though, so that was a thing that wasn't cool.

The man was mumbling as he turned around to face me, arms waving as though he were conducting an orchestra. The actual words were lost on me, almost impossible to hear over the rising wind. There might have been something about a ritual, or the voices in his head demanding he kill? Oh, and there was now ice growing all over the place, so that was fun.

Man, who would have thought the first person I would find in the middle of the desert was crazy? I mean, what were the chances?

The sand swirling around me was getting closer. This was the first time in a while that I'd had to really push my Aura to keep it going; it felt like it was physically being beaten back even though I wasn't entirely sure it had a form to take the blows.

Even so, this put me between a rock and a hard place. Figuratively, of course.

I had no idea how far into the desert I'd managed to walk. I might have been halfway, or I might have been one sand dune over from a rainforest. Even so, I was two weeks into the journey, and if this guy was any indication, I would probably have to pack my bags and turn back towards civilisation.

Hell the fuck no, I was not gonna do that.

Sparks blazed from my skin as I reconstituted behind the statue, out of the guy's view. I peeked an eye around the corner, pretty much hugging the thing as I kept as much of my body out of view as I could. The guy hadn't moved from where I'd first seen him, seemingly content to just fling his arms around until I got the fuck off his lawn.

Amazing how many people I meet immediately want to kill me. Occasionally I would wonder, but this time I was sure that I hadn't done anything to piss anyone else off.

What a dick.

No, you know what? Fuck him. I was gonna go around him, and I was gonna keep walking until I got where I wanted to go, because I was the bigger man in this scenario and I didn't need to throw around all this flashy shit to make myself feel better. Besides, I didn't see _his _fucking name anywhere in the sand. Unless he had written it and the wind had blown it over. Which just meant that it was ultimately the wind's fault and I was totally without blame in this situation.

Either way, fuck that guy.

I pushed away from the statue, and felt something shift beneath my hand with a loud crack. The noise was so sudden that it took me a second to realise that it wasn't another bolt of lightning coming down, but a second was all I needed to feel the air grow glacial around me.

I was prepared to blink a few sand dunes over; it was a fair distance away, but not quite far enough to invalidate the walking I'd done to get here. Hopefully it would be enough space between me and this fucking lunatic to hoof it in the other direction.

Something cold wrapped around my tail, and for but one heartbeat, I felt my concentration falter.

There wasn't a whisper of wind as I disappeared. A loud splintering replaced it, sending me ass-over-head into the air on a trajectory that was about as controlled at the rest of my life. My tail felt heavier than usual, dragging me in erratic circles at a terrifying pace. I could have only been up there for the amount of time it would take someone to say "the fuck is that thing", but for what the experience didn't have in length it more than made up for in magnitude.

And then, like all good things, it had to come to an end. I felt my entire body collide with something that felt like brick, sending out a brilliant cascade of sparks that shrouded whatever I was slipping down in an impenetrable glow.

First my face fell, then my arms, and then finally my chest. My legs followed suit, but my tail…

Oh for fuck sakes, not again.

The wind was already beginning to settle by the time the sparks were dying down. Whatever I was stuck to faltered, but it didn't fall. I was high in the sky, but regardless of that I was still looking up, squinting through the invasive light and hoping against hope that the universe didn't like irony as much as I thought it did.

The first thing I could make out was my tail. Alright, that was an expected start. I went from the base to the tip of the bone spire, and I am proud to say that despite my tumble into the crazy old bastard that had tried to kill me a moment after meeting me, I had not succeeded in stabbing him with any part of my body.

The large chunk of ice that I'd taken with me on that last teleport, on the other hand, was already sticking out the other side of his chest.

You know what, I was still going to count that as a win. At least until we started falling out of the sky. Because, you know, the guy keeping us up there was all kinds of corpsified.

We hit the ground with a small puff of sand. Even though only one of us was still alive, I had to wait for my aura to untwist my ankle after the bastard used me to soften his landing. That was real clever, actually, I should have thought of that.

My walk resumed the very next day. I took shelter underneath the statue, which somehow didn't actually get cold throughout the night.

I reached the next town a week after that encounter.

During all that time, it never stopped raining.

**XxX**

_About a stone's throw away from Salem's joint, 3 years later (don't tell her)_

By the time I'd stolen a calendar, done all the calculations, and deduced that I was around fifteen years old, I was almost certain that I'd seen it all.

Was it presumptuous? Yes. I didn't know how big the planet was. By all accounts, the continent I'd traversed multiple times could have been a blister on the world's ass for all the impact it had on reality. My available context and relative life experience numbered somewhere in the lower fraction of zero digits. Did I really care? No, not in the least.

Between all the monsters, the ridiculous climates, and the crazy people that kept jumping on me like I was a free ride out of this hellhole, I was well and truly accustomed to always expecting the worst. Person in the distance? Well, they were definitely trying to kill me. Berries hanging off a bush I passed right as my stomach started rumbling? They were probably poisoned. Thunderstorm in the distance? _OH CRAP HE'S BACK._

Pessimism really did get an undeserved bad rap. I was only ever going to be correct or happy. So what if I had to be miserable to hold onto a flimsy high ground? I was petty enough to feel that was worth it.

Still, like a shitty teenager, I'd thought I had everything figured out. Only enjoying myself when I was unhappy and only acknowledging I was incorrect when it still made me feel good. Man, sucks to be the person reading this from my perspective, huh?

That belief carried me through the lonely days. It rocked me to bed at night and shook me awake in the morning. It strengthened with every day that I didn't manage to do something stupid and accidentally end my life.

It lasted all the way up until the day that I decided to get a job.

When I woke up that day, I knew it was nothing like the unassuming tiny step in life that it was trying to pass itself off as. The sun was high in a cloudless sky, Illuminating the beautiful view of a mountain range as insects chirped in the long grass. There was no wolf snout poking me in the ribs, no bear paw stepping all over my head and pushing my nose into the dirt.

Instantly, I knew something was wrong.

The world was never this happy unless it was planning an ungodly amount of retribution.

Well not today, pal. I was smarter than you gave me credit for. If you were gonna do something to this idyllic little slice of Heaven, I would just teleport myself somewhere far, _far _away. Fool me once, fool me twice, but you won't get me a hundredth time!

I packed up my meager belongings, slung my bag over my back, and gave the sky a double-middle finger salute before popping off to a place where, and I will quote my exact thought that prompted this location; 'somewhere that people will appreciate me'.

I felt smart, all the way until I heard the chanting.

"Syug cif siht otni troffe hcum os gnittup mi. Retrevnoc txet sdrawkcab a otni tup I taht ecnetnes a tsuj yllaretil si siht."

I know I probably say this a lot, but you have got to be fucking shitting me.

A snap decision had to be made in that moment. I looked around at the cloaks of the many people surrounding me, my eyes effortlessly picking up the details in the low candlelight. The ground below me was inked with an intricate pattern that had a few more points than I felt entirely comfortable being around, and the entire placed _reeked _of blood.

_Ha ha ha fucknope._

Time for me to use my creep-given gift to skedaddle back to my idyllic little mountain paradise. I gathered up my Aura, a picture of somewhere else in my mind, who cares where- and that control I had washed away entirely as my body was swamped with… something.

It was dark, heavy, and impossible to grasp. I pushed against it, trying to clear myself some breathing room like I did whenever a dust or sandstorm kicked up around me, but I could feel nothing other than the faintest flicker of life underneath the shadowy mess.

Weh-he-hell, this didn't seem good.

"He has answered our calls! The Dark One has smiled upon us this day!"

Bullshit. I haven't smiled in years.

I tried to peer through the crowd around me, eyeing them up and down in pursuit of the guy that'd spoken. Chances were that he would be more important to my continued survival than any of the idiots still chanting. What was that, anyway? Sounded like some sort of foreign language in reverse, creepy.

It took but a moment to find him. His arms were outstretched to me like he was begging for a hug, and the massive amount of black stuff that was covering _my _body seemed to be emanating from _his_. At least, it was the same substance as what was making up his cloak, swirling to a random beat and leaving patterns on the floor at his feet.

All the other people just had boring cloaks with a boring hood. I honestly felt a little underdressed, but the sticky shit was still all over me and covering the fact that I hadn't gotten the memo for fancy costume, so that was something, I guess.

Like a helpless fish that had been hooked, I was slowly reeled in. The faces I passed were enraptured, blissful. For what reason and to what end, I had no idea, nor did I ever want to find out.

Frantically, I threw every little bit of soul I might have ever had into one final push.

One tiny spark, on my left hand, answered the summons.

It was a fleeting feeling, my Aura clawing through the miasma of gunk opposing it and bringing itself the slightest bit of life against my skin. I zeroed in on the feeling of that spark as soon as I knew it was there, throwing all caution to the wind and doing the very first thing I could think of.

I was being dragged past a curtain when I dipped into the second power I'd ever stolen. With an avenue for Aura to get through now open, that tiny spark roared into an inferno that dwarfed my entire body. The black substance melted away, already entirely gone by the time I had sprung to my feet and raised my clenched fists.

A hush fell over the room as the man slowly turned back around. The only noise was the fire crackling along my body and across the floor around me; even the chanting had died out.

The man raised an single eyebrow, his lips still set in a slight grin. I saw his arm tense, ready to move; before a small hissing caught our attention. In unison, we turned to the side, as the last thing holding the curtain up fell victim to the intense heat and crumbled away.

I stared at the small thread of… whatever the curtain had been made of, some sort of fabric, that had initially escaped ignition as it rapidly disappeared. The thing was winding in ridiculous patterns along ground that transitioned about as naturally from stone to metal as I transitioned from asleep to awake. That is to say, poorly.

Growing slightly bored, I narrowed my eyes, following along with the tangled mess of weave like I was trying to escape a maze. After a few seconds, it straightened out, and I raised my gaze up to a large wooden crate with "**FLAME DUST, CAUTION, FLAMMABLE!"** written on the side in large font.

Huh, it was also written on the even bigger crate beside it. And the truly massive one in the corner, which the end of the thread was… dipping… into…

The lit end of the thread passed the first crate. It skirted around the second, and only slowed slightly in its climb towards the innards of the third.

I looked back at the man.

The man looked back at me.

I turned on my heel and, with a whisper of wind, had a great view of the massive explosion lighting up the horizon. I hunkered down to a large rock that seemed fairly stuck in the earth, to wait out the shockwave I could already see approaching, and all the shadows that seemed intent on invading my body.

I think, in the fleeting few seconds before the winds hit, that was the moment I decided to get a job.

_**BOOM**_

* * *

**I wouldn't expect the next update to be this quick. Let's just say that I've been feeling inspired.**

**Edit: I went back through and added both locations and timing for the flashback scenes, to better represent them as flashbacks. Timing is marginally more important than the actual locations; those have no bearing on the actual plot.**


	3. Chapter 3

**Been a while.**

**Life has a habit of getting in the way at times.**

**I'm still alive, though. Whether my writing skills have survived along with me has yet to be seen.**

* * *

Hoh boy, the big city. What a time to be alive.

My neck would be stiff as hell in the morning with how far I had it cranked up, but that wasn't about to stop me. I'd stayed in towns before, of course, usually when I'd had enough of the wilderness and wanted a night away. This, on the other hand? This wasn't anything like the small wooden buildings, and friendly folk that were willing to trade a room for some exotic silks and a bit more food than I could have possibly eaten myself.

Everything here was straight up. I'd seen trees that were shorter than most of these buildings. People bustled around me, only giving me enough attention to sneer at my appearance before moving on. Their clothes were orderly, smooth.

All I could see around me was smooth edges. It was difficult to get used to the idea; nature didn't _do _smooth edges.

Shacks were usually constructed before they could be torn down by the elements or the Grimm (those monsters had names, who knew?). Tree bark was never uniform. The smoothest thing out there was probably the bone spires on the Beowulves and Ursae, and, well, fuck those guys.

In comparison, this place gave off the strong impression of spare time. Nobody was running around, trying to make sure the harvest would be enough to feed them. Nobody was fixing up their fences with the sturdiest materials they had on hand. Nobody needed to hold a lantern as they went, not with the lights in the streets illuminating almost every inch of the place.

_This _was what people were capable of when they weren't just struggling to survive. The air may have tasted horrible and it was almost loud enough around me to hurt my ears, but seeing people who were able to thrive in this hellhole was still pretty damn cool.

That was until I stepped out onto a crossing, and almost had my head torn off my shoulders by some maniac on a neon motorcycle.

Long golden hair trailed behind my soon-to-be assassin as she took the corner at speed, looking like little more than a streak of lightning that had never learned the rules of the road. To her credit, she did swerve at the last possible moment in an attempt to avoid me, but by that time I had already wrapped my tail around the old man that had been crossing the road with me and blinked us both to the opposite sidewalk.

I hit the ground on my shoulder blades and slid for a moment, thrown off balance by my passenger. Not willing to risk his ancient bones bursting into dust, I held him to my chest and pushed my Aura to my back, leaving a long trail of sparks in our wake.

My tail steadied him after we bounced twice and stood up. I took a moment to shake my fist at the woman as she blitzed around another corner.

"Bitch! Learn to drive!" I hollered after her. Something told me she didn't even hear me. Probably the lack of response and the fact that she hadn't stopped. I shook my fist one last time, the promise for retribution imbedded deeply into my soul, and lowered my arm just in time for my shirt to slide down it.

I pushed it back up my bicep, rotating my shoulder to put it back into its place. The thing was fitted perfectly, what with the fact that it was years old and still a bit oversized, but I still liked it for its- why was it falling again?

And why was my back suddenly colder?

I yanked the shirt over my head, ignoring the whispering around me that the action inspired. Flipping it over in my hands, I stared down at the massive hole that the concrete floor had torn into it, small pieces of gravel falling away and fraying the edges even further. I sighed, and that little bit of air shooting out of my mouth was enough to overtax the very last thread holding the whole thing together.

So I guess I wasn't as good at Aura manipulation as I would have liked to believe.

"Ah, damn it!" I threw the shirt off to the side, crossing my arms over my bare chest and glaring down the street where the mystery rider had fucked off to. I didn't have a spare, not after I'd accidentally teleported to a sea trench and lost my backpack to the horrors lurking in the deep a few months back. I could always steal one, but a city like this would definitely have some form of surveillance.

I was about to warp back out into the countryside, off to some village that would let me trade a couple days of farmwork for some hand-me-downs, when something tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around, glimpsing the old man as he finished unravelling my tail from around his waist and held the card that he'd used to get my attention out to me.

The writing on it was flowing, elaborate, and far too tiny for the effort it would put into reading it. I did take it from him, however, and turned it over in my hand. Unless this was some ridiculously small letter or the key to a map of buried treasure, then I'd more than likely find some sort of logo to give me a clue.

I was hoping for buried treasure, if I'm being honest with you. Finding some remote island out in the middle of a perpetual storm would have been very easy for someone who could control the weather and end up wherever they wanted to go.

What I got instead was bold letters, deep purple standing against a gray background that seemed to be covered in glitter.

_Making The Man - redeemable for 1000 lien in purchases._

"Uh, dude-" I looked back up, staring at the empty space that had once held an old man. His gray hair and wizened features should have been easy enough to pick out in a crowd, but looking left and right, I could see neither hide nor hair of him.

What I did see, standing right in front of me, was a glowing, purple sign. The windows it was above were home to several mannequins in snazzy suits, stuck in poses that I couldn't help but find a bit ridiculous. Rows of clothing created isles that seemed to go on longer than I could see from outside, holding everything from sleepwear to what I would swear until my dying breath was a medieval suit of armour.

My eyes found the clerk manning the counter, taking in his grey hair and changed outfit. The old man made that suit work for him, looking the absolute picture of dignity as he beckoned me towards his store.

I glanced down at the card once more, then up to the brightly-lit metropolis of clothing that lay before me. Then I shrugged, and made my way to the door.

Fuck it, I'll take it.

**XxX**

It took me upwards of half an hour to actually leave the store.

Strangely enough, the actual 'shopping' portion of my visit only took me five minutes. It was easy enough to bypass all the formal wear and tight shirts for things that actually looked like they'd be comfortable to move around in. By the time I was done, I'd barely even spent half the gift certificate I'd been given, and I already had a few new t-shirts, a couple pairs of pants, a new set of shoes, and a nice warm coat for the cold nights I would be spending out in the alleyways until I found a place to live.

"Gothic," the old man had said, once he'd realised that everything I'd picked out was jet black.

"Laziness," I'd corrected, because trying to make colours go well together on my body was entirely anathema to my actual interests in life. Black was safe, it matched my hair and apparently made my eyes 'pop', whatever that means. They didn't feel like they'd exploded.

After that, the old man had waved me to the back of the store. I'd ignored the crashes happening near the front because it seemed like the polite thing to do at the time, and once he'd returned he'd set about unlocking a door that I'd never noticed, even though I'd walked past that patch of blank wall at least twice.

Given that he'd somehow found the time to change his clothing yet again, I was ready and willing to just account it to magic and move on with my life. Unfortunately, I couldn't cut ties with the occult quite yet, because my haircut was next.

Then came the manicure, then the massage, then the three course dinner…

I think the old man was still on the phone with his granddaughter, trying to convince her to 'come down to Vale and meet this nice boy!' when I waved goodbye and fled. Nice man, that one. I would absolutely save him from another idiot driver if given the chance. Would not accept the reward at the end, though, no thank you.

Even so, with freshly conditioned hair and clothes that weren't a week away from retirement, I stepped back out into the street. The moon had barely moved through the sky, but given that they old man seemed willing and able to hold down every known job in human existence, it wouldn't surprise me if he had some means of manipulating the flow of time.

Still, even though I didn't really want to be rude, I was absolutely going to be rude. I threw myself across time and space before the old man could get it in his head to see me off, aimed towards what I was hoping would be the beginning of my future.

Maybe I'd start in an area that was a little lower class. Build up a reputation around town, take some baby steps. The road of life was long and filled with opportunity, there was no real reason to rush things.

I was feeling pretty good about myself when I reappeared outside a place called 'Junior's'.

Then some dickhead wearing a suit flew out the window beside me. Followed by another one. The girl that came crashing through the _wall _after them was far more aesthetically interesting, though I only really noticed _after _her forehead bounced off my shoulder and I snatched her out of the air with my tail before she could land on the broken glass.

Man, what an interesting place.

..._Could_ do without the chick bleeding all over my new threads, though.

Fucking inconsiderate city people.

**XxX**

The girl I'd shifted to my arms was already beginning to glow with Aura as I pushed my way through the partially ruined doors and into the headache-inducing building.

I hadn't really known what to expect with a name like Juniors. Well, that's not entirely true, I was actually expecting something more along the lines of a gentlemen's club. A place where people went to stroke their mustache and sip from glasses of brandy around a roaring fireplace... Wait, what do you mean that's not what a gentlemen's club is anymore-

The inside of the building didn't offer me any hints. Once upon a time, tables would have been laid out in a pattern and pillars would have been erected about to hold up the upper balconies, but right now it was a mess. Rubble that had once been walls littered the ground. Many men, all dressed identically, lay amongst the smouldering remains, alive if only for the dull glow of Aura surrounding each and every one of them.

And standing tall, in the middle of it all, was a girl.

There was no way I could refer to her as a woman. There was just too much about her that pointed me instinctively toward youth, regardless of her body or demeanour. The gauntlets covering her hands clicked as she brought them down, long golden hair flowing luxuriously in the manufactured breeze- wait a minute.

I'd seen that hair before. Very recently. Where, oh where, had she come from…

Right! She was that nice girl that had gotten me situated in the city by proxy of her horrible driving! Well, I was always the most well-mannered man on any typical country road that I found myself on, so it was only natural that I thank her properly.

The girl in my arms was placed carefully into a conveniently shaped pile of cement, her head braced against what appeared to be half a cushion. If she rolled to too far to her left, she would probably end up taking out an eye on the remains of a chair, but that was no longer my problem.

Part of a ruined pillar shifted, the echo sounding almost like a motorcycle engine. I very carefully did not have a flashback to earlier in the day.

With all the dramatic resolve I could muster, I threw my hand up, a single finger raised in a most accusatory manner. "You!" I jabbed forth, catching the blonde's attention with a shower of sparks. She was practically bathed in Aura already, so it only felt fair to outfit myself the same way. Now all I had to do was thank her politely for her role in recent events- "You owe me a shitty shirt!"

Damn it, this always happens! Why must I be so bad at talking to people!?

"Another goon, huh?" The mane of flame-coloured hair flowing behind her shimmered from side to side as she cracked her neck. With the building's flickering lights and nauseating colour scheme, it made for an almost hypnotising sight. "If you were smart, you would have stayed down!"

The step I'd taken forth faltered, my finger curling inwards slightly in response to my brief confusion. What the hell was she talking about, goon-

Oh, wait a moment.

A few paces to my left lay one of the suited men, the glow around his body very faint, though still visible. With his red tie and black formal attire, he was dressed identically to most of the other people lying amongst the debris. Some of them were wearing sunglasses, though more than an insignificant amount of the crap all over the floor looked like tinted glass and gnarled plastic.

More importantly, the colours of our clothing were similar. I was lacking the tie - and so long as things didn't go horribly wrong, I would never have to wear one of the blasted things - but the overcoat and pants were close enough. Even the red was accounted for, what with the icky city slicker blood that had been painted across my front.

With my eyesight, I could easily see the difference, even with the lighting in the building ruined.

Unfortunately, one of the things that I'd learned through the years was that my senses were a bit sharper than a lot of other peoples'. Hell if I knew what the crew here had done to this girl, but in her eyes, I must have looked similar enough to count as one of them.

Man, it sure was nice to know that she apparently put in the effort to forget anyone she'd come close to running down in the street. Really makes me feel good inside.

Aaaaand now she was lunging at me.

If she ended up on my tail, I would probably be forced to rage-quit this city and find another one.

Backing away blindly through a warzone wasn't very easy. Fists flew around my head, much faster than the Grimm outside the city limits. Thankfully, they were slower than the bullets I'd had to dodge in the past, so when they finally managed to cave something in, it was just one of the remaining pillars instead of my gorgeous face.

With a thought and a small flex of Aura, I was standing behind the bar, watching as about half of the balcony above her collapsed. Her hair flared up once more, actual _flames _dancing across her scalp as she yanked her fist out of solid marble.

Well, that wasn't good. She was strong, that much was obvious, but a tradeoff of that strength might have been a decrease in mental faculties. Or maybe she was just naturally stupid enough to be fine with collapsing the building she was standing in. Some unholy combination of a grunt and a scream tore from her throat, the intensity of the fire spiking. A visible haze of heat was rising by the time she turned around to face me once more, the temperature in the room edging upwards towards uncomfortable.

She pointed her fists at me, identical clicks echoing through the air. The gauntlets she was wearing whirled to life, a subtle glow beginning to build up down the many chambers that decorated her knuckles.

All of that came to an abrupt halt when my left hand twitched, and two ropes of _burning hair_ lashed around her throat from either side of her head. Damn, and here I was just expecting some boring normal inferno. Did she seriously set her own hair on _fire _to get stronger? That was _hardcore_, dude.

Still, though, therein lay the problem. Granted, I didn't know what she was doing here or what these people did to her, but the fact of the matter remained that she was going to bring the roof down on us. Unconscious people weren't very good at running away, and maybe bringing that girl back inside had been a bad idea, but that was hindsight talking and hindsight is a dickhead. Besides, I didn't usually find situations that let me practice pyrokinesis.

The girl was grabbing at her neck now, her face shifting to blue at an alarming rate. Hmm, maybe a side-effect of her Semblance was an enhanced reliance on her respiratory system? Still, though, it should have been very easy for her to just tear her hair and escape from the situation, so why wasn't she?

I felt her Aura waver before her balance started to fail her. Damn if she wasn't tough, her eyes had refused to leave mine throughout the whole ordeal. Even as she crashed down to her knees, her gaze promised a slow and agonising death. I twitched my fingers almost carelessly in response, the extra pressure applied enough to shatter her Aura like glass.

The fire leeched out of her hair almost immediately. The grip I'd had on it was already gone, the hair falling away from her throat before she could hit the ground. It was more an impulsive decision than anything else when I reappeared by her side, catching her shoulders before her face was introduced with some of the shattered glass and marble.

Nobody could tell me that I wasn't good at what I did. Her neck didn't have a single mark, nothing to indicate what we'd just gone through. Her Aura had taken all of the damage, which basically meant that I had perfect control over my abilities and we both got lucky as fuck, I'm talking entirely out of my ass right now. Holy shit I almost killed another one.

A few tense seconds passed, sparks falling from everywhere except my hands while I waited for her to stir. Gradually, the cascade slowed to a shower, and then a light trickle, ever-present while sitting under a ceiling that could come tumbling down at any second. Our surroundings didn't make me feel much better; it was hard to see a patch of actual ground beneath all the rubble and (hopefully only _unconscious_) bodies.

I heaved a sigh, exhaling the cloud of dust that had been taking up space within my lungs. Less than fifteen minutes of actively exploring the city and I'd already knocked someone unconscious. With their own hair. Which was on _fire_.

Were all big cities like this?

Someone behind me groaned. It took a second for me to realise that I hadn't been the one to make the noise. Rolling my blonde opponent onto her side (while taking explicit care to not yank out any hair for... some inexplicable reason), I turned around and craned my neck over the pile of what used to be neon lights.

A rocket launcher appeared over the lip of the trash mountain. Following it closely was a gruff looking man, gravel in his beard and a slightly unfocused glint in his eye. My presence seemed to elude him for a moment, because when his eyes finally focused on my position, he heaved the rocket launcher in my direction. He then stumbled slightly on his feet, and I waited patiently while he physically shook some of the fog from his head.

Only then did he seem to acknowledge what he was actually looking at. Me sitting on the ground, beside the unconscious form of the girl that I could only assume had torn this place apart.

"...Hey there." I raised a hand in greeting, my tail following the movements behind my back. His eyes flicked between the two for a moment, but he didn't say anything. He only stared, his grip on the rocket launcher getting precariously loose.

I took that as a good sign, directing one last glance at our devastated surroundings before clearing my throat.

"So… you know any places nearby that are hiring?"


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N:** College is kicking my ass.

Gacha is kicking me in the ribs when I fall.

Send help.

* * *

"I'm not wearing the tie."

"If you want to work in this club, you wear the uniform. That includes the tie."

"I don't see those two unconscious girls wearing any ties."

"Their tits are bigger than yours, so they get more leeway. Now stop checking them out and keep cleaning."

"Yeah, well…! My dick is probably bigger than both of theirs combined, so… wait, does this new job thing mean having to talk to people? Because I'm not good at that."

"You're not? Damn, had me fooled."

Rolling my eyes, I gave the rope binding a large chunk of ruined building one last tug, before looping my tail underneath and blinking away. Reappearing in a desert, I dropped the cargo from about halfway between the sand and the clouds, leaving it to be found by a civilisation that would consider my current one ancient.

I gave myself precisely three seconds to enjoy the wind rushing through my hair, before sending myself back to the club. Junior yelped, shooting me a dirty look as I touched down right beside him and sprayed the sand I'd accumulated everywhere like a dog drying itself off.

"I told you, somewhere other than the desert!"

"Terribly sorry," I drawled in the most droll tone I could manage, leaning one hand against my hip as I curled my tail around the thinnest portion of a collapsed pillar. "Would _you _like to carry this shit out of here?"

A raised middle finger was my only reply. With a snort, I was dragging the pillar into some nondescript wilderness, dropping it onto the skull of a Beowolf that looked at me funny. Its horrified screaming was still echoing in my ears when I arrived back at the club.

On the plus side, I was almost done clearing out the large trash. Dust thick enough to be considered another layer of foundation was still caking the floor, but everything aside from one corner could be easily remedied with a stiff breeze.

Not bad for about five minute's hard work.

Ending up on Junior's doorstep had been quite the lucky break for me. Junior might have disagreed with that sentiment, considering the current state of his nightclub, but he'd found himself with a mountain of work that needed doing _right _after his number of available employees had been drastically reduced. I couldn't have planned a more convenient situation if I'd tried.

Even so, I would have liked to see how effective his trained army of tie-wearing monkeys would have been at getting this place back into working order. I was only constrained by the need to prioritise the shit that had people buried under it; walls and doorways were pleasantries that meant nothing to me.

I could tell that Junior agreed with me. Even as I accidentally swung my tail into the side of his head and he swore viciously, the appreciation was positively pouring from him.

He wasn't quite as thrilled when I did it a second time and made him drop the goon he was carrying. The rubble in the far corner of the club was already being sorted through by yours truly by the time he was reaching for his rocket launcher. He was probably crazy enough to fire it off, too; the place was already fucking ruined.

Silence mostly pervaded the room as we worked. Our only soundtrack was some bass beat from further down the street, and the occasional groaning from the party people on the floor. Junior didn't so much as acknowledge me, too busy trying to get his unconscious men situated and accounted for. I toiled quietly in my corner, doing my best to roll all the remaining crap into one easy pile. All this jumping from one place to another was starting to make me dizzy.

Half a minute later, a gruff cough shattered the relative peace that had settled. I broke from my thoughts (_I wonder, if I make a ball out of all this dust and throw it at him, would he shoot me_), poking my head over the small hill I'd constructed out of the finest materials gauntleted fists could break.

"Hmm?"

"Teleporting is your Semblance, huh?" Rude, he wasn't even looking at me. "Must come in handy."

"Uh, not really." One of the broken glasses on top of my shifted in the breeze of my breath. I had to cross my eyes to focus on it, lest I wreck the synergy of my work even further in my attempts to fix it. "It was the first Semblance I got from the people that killed themselves on me, though."

Something thumped onto the ground, sending vibrations up my tower and dislodging the careful work I'd put into the glass. Annoyed, I refocused on Junior… only to be distracted by the goon that was sprawled out at his feet. Junior's arms weren't raised, but his palms were upturned from when he'd been carrying him.

The man groaned, before rolling into a patch of broken glass I'd yet to clear. I winced, but before I could get the chance to warp over and help him, the ground beneath his back gave out.

A low whistle echoed from the hole as I jumped over and cautiously poked my head into the enclosing darkness. Even with my eyesight, I couldn't see through the thick curtain of shadows, which left me with nothing to do but wait for whatever noise may return.

Five heartbeats later, a loud crash echoed up from the cavern. The building shook violently with the impact. One of the few light fixtures that had managed to weather the initial storm came undone, and would have come down right on top of my head if I hadn't moved to the side and let it fall through the hole.

I looked back up towards Junior, doing my best to ignore the crescendo of shattering glass, twisting metal, and agonised groaning. It was difficult to tell if my new boss had even noticed what had happened, seeing as he was still staring at me with an expression I wasn't anywhere near equipped enough to identify.

"...Do you think he's going to be ok?"

**XxX**

"So you kill people, and steal their Aura."

"No, people kill themselves _on _me, and then they _give me_ their Aura."

"That makes no sense, kid."

"It would make perfect sense if you'd stop trying to call me a _murderer_."

I couldn't have made my annoyance any more clear in my voice if I had tried. With my tail flicking irritably behind me, I got back to work making sure the blonde girl was laid out on an unbroken chunk of the bar counter, warping in and out of the room in a bid to make her current accommodations more comfortable. I'd knocked her out, so I should have been the one to take responsibility.

Junior had elected to roll his eyes and wave a hand in my direction when I'd told him what I was doing. He wasn't paying me much attention, disappearing behind the bar for minutes at a time and only reemerging to stare at me with furrowed brows. If it wasn't for the continuous sound of papers rustling, I would have thought he was pouring himself drinks back there.

I was halfway through suturing together a flower crown, because I was starting to get bored and adding another blanket to the pile I'd already found might actually suffocate the girl, when Junior's head came back up from behind the counter. This time, the rest of him followed, bringing along a folder that he was already flipping through before he even had his feet under him.

"So, kid." I had to blink a few times to tear my attention away from the folder. My tail was still flicking from side to side in unison with the pages. The hole in the floor rumbled dangerously as Junior edged his way around it. "You- uh, do people... _kill themselves_ on you often?"

My tail stilled, before coming up behind me to scratch at my chin. How often was _often_, I had to wonder. Was this something that tended to happen to people? Was I actually the leading cause?

"Probably…" I tilted my head to the side, doing my best to run whatever statistics I could come up with, "...more than the average person with a sharp tail, if I had to guess."

"Yeah, I'll bet." Junior snorted, and damn near fell into the hole when the ground at his feet almost crumbled under the sudden movement. For a moment, I considered jumping over there to try to steady him, but given how ironic it would be if our current conversation led to _that _particular tragedy, I decided to trust him to save his own life.

Miraculously for a man his size, he managed to dance out of the way of danger, his arms pinwheeling in a vague attempt at balancing him out. I pretended not to notice anything, opting instead to finish up my flower crown and slip it over the girl's head while he sorted his shit out.

Eventually, he lunged to the side, hurling the file into the air as he rolled to safety. It could have just been my sensitive hearing playing a trick on me, but I could have sworn I heard some sort of rumbling howl coming from the pit. Abruptly, it cut itself off, and the small vibrations that had been running through the building came to a sudden stop.

I shot a glance at Junior, watching him climb to his feet and brush the dust off his dress shirt. He didn't seem overly concerned about what had just happened, not even sparing the ruinous floor so much as a blink as he reached out and caught the file. Twisting it around, he presented me with a picture of a man atop a sprawling wall of text, his tone entirely bland as he said, "Was this guy one of them?"

Holy shit, that had been cool. What had he even said to me? I wasn't paying attention after that little display. What could possibly be in that hole didn't even concern me as much as it should… alright, that was a lie, it concerned me a lot. But still, sick moves.

...What was the question again? Oh, right, where was I on the night of the murder. Manslaughter. Extremely assisted suicide. What are you, a cop?

I studied the picture for a moment, trying to figure out where I'd seen that smug grin before. The picture's quality wasn't all that great, blurry in all the wrong places and too far away for any sort of positive identification to be made, but there was… something about those eyes. I'd seen the conviction behind them before, even if it had been older and far more sinister.

My mind flashed back to over a decade ago, back when I had watched the first person I'd seen in months simply disappear from right in front of me. This man _had _looked at me before, back when I was young and confused and still tripping over memories of a past life that I couldn't have possibly been sure that I had lived.

Even so, I was pretty sure about this one. It was difficult to forget the first time you ever stole a Semblance, after all.

"It is... _entirely _possible that he died in my general area." Aside from the eyes, he seemed pretty unassuming. The monsters I'd gotten use to had glowing eyes and coarse fur. That tired grin of his, the way his eyebrow was raised ever so slightly at the camera, it all seemed like an expression that I could easily wear. "Uh, should I leave?"

"No no, stay, I insist." My reluctance didn't seem to phase Junior one bit. He'd been getting better at just rolling with things throughout the course of the conversation. As he flicked the paper over and tucked the picture back into its place, I had to wonder where all this adaptation was coming from.

"See, this right here," Junior leaned against the bar, a few paces away from the girl, and waved the file carelessly around his shoulder. "is Ube Vanta. Had a bad habit of preying on children and using lethal force on Hunters. Nobody ever managed to catch him, he'd teleport out every time they tried."

He glanced to the side, his face twisted into a grimace. "Real crafty bastard, right up until he fell off the grid altogether a little over a decade ago."

I tracked my eyes over the folder as Junior tossed it carelessly back behind the counter, idly trying to figure out if I had ever seen anything that contained more pages. The only thing that might have beaten it was the photo album I'd gotten from that burning village, but that would require some precise comparisons to figure out.

Maybe if I asked nice enough, Junior would let me borrow it.

Too bad I'd already teleported behind the counter and was flicking through it before I could even think to ask.

_You _try controlling impulses when travel time was cut down to nothing.

"If that's all he did," It wasn't all he did, not by a long shot, but reading and understanding were two very different things, "why is this file so big?"

Junior huffed, keeping his arms crossed over his chest as he turned to look at me. He made no move to take the folder back, but I still lowered it anyway, intent on actually listening to what he had to say.

"It's this big _because _he was a nobody. He had nothing to his name, no training or special weapon or specifically impressive strategies." Powerful shoulders rose and fell in a shrug. "He was wanted for over twenty years and all he had to keep him ahead of the law was his Semblance. He could be anywhere and do anything, and for a while nobody had the means or the opportunity to take him down. Bastard was even good enough at sensing Aura to see everything coming."

Except a tail to the chest. I remained steadfast in my attempts to not make a sound, even though an inappropriate giggle was threatening to escape. Actually, wait, no, this folder was filled with horrible shit. Screw it.

I used the flatter side of my serrated tail to hide my mouth as I laughed. Unfortunately for me, my tail wasn't wide enough, which just meant that I looked like a bit of a moron. Still, there was only Junior there to see me, and he didn't seem to be paying too much attention.

In fact, he was still just standing there, looking up at the clear night sky through one of the shattered windows.

"To be honest with you, there's a pretty big part of me that thinks you're lying, but I don't-"

I smacked myself in the head with my tail before he could even finish speaking, the noise making Junior jump and tense up. How could I have forgotten that I didn't actually have any proof beyond the Semblance? Man, thinking about it like that, it was a miracle and a half that Junior had even given me the time to say my piece in the first place.

"Ahhh, right, yeah, I get it." I tossed the folder over my shoulder, then lunged for it with my tail when I realised how dickish that move would have been. I don't know how I managed to actually catch it before it hit the ground, but my best guess was the culmination of all my childhood dreams finding a four-leafed clover. "Hang on, I know where his body is. Give me a second."

So long as he hadn't been eaten by Grimm, then this Ube guy would still be stinking up My Place. I hadn't been back there since leaving it the first time, not with the brand new corpse smell, but finding my way back there would be a breeze.

Somewhat literally.

I had to take a moment to visualise it. The trees surrounding a stone structure that I'd built on a slow day, tall enough to gaze upon the grotto that I'd never really remembered to explore fully. The tree trunk that had hidden a few pilfered items. And of course, the body that I'd left behind, belonging to the asshole that had started this entire clusterfuck to begin with.

"Don't you fucking dare-"

I blinked back _to _reality, and then _out _of it. Junior had been stretching an arm out towards me, the image seeming to warble before me, until it broke and a jagged treeline replaced it.

My Place hadn't changed much in the years since I'd abandoned it. From a brief inspection, I couldn't see any signs that someone had been here since me. Why people would leave such a prime piece of real-estate on its own for so long was beyond me.

Well, I mean, not _really_. In fact, there was a very good reason at my feet, lying prone in clothes that used to fit a lot better than they did now.

The massive Ursa that was staring at me in outright confusion also didn't help.

The bear wasn't really any of my concern. I nodded to it, just once, in acknowledgement. After a moment, it nodded back, falling down onto all four paws and ambling out of the clearing with no particular haste.

Ursa could be cool sometimes. Typically they were the Grimm that would live long enough to actually learn about the world around them. Had it been a Beowolf here to greet me, I probably would have killed it out of spite.

Seriously, fuck those guys.

"All right buddy," I nudged Ube with a foot. One of his hands fell off. "Up and at 'em."

Being the kind of guy that would prey on children, Ube didn't seem to feel like cooperating. Typical criminal scum, probably. With a grumbled curse, I curled my tail around one of his legs, trying to ignore the way it gave way beneath the miniscule pressure I was applying.

An exhale and a pop later, I was back in the nightclub.

With the grace of a swan, I landed on my feet, only wobbling on the uneven rubble for a moment before finding my balance again. With the grace of a corpse, Ube hit the ground face first and rolled, making two full rotations before he bumped into an overturned chair and was forced to stop.

With eerie precision, his skeletal grin fell directly onto Junior. The man, standing a little to the left of where I had left him, let out what I could only describe as a gurgling rattle. Actually, that could have been the hole in the floor. We would have to patch that up sometime soon.

Tail swishing behind me, I flopped back onto the ground, tapping out a random rhythm with a few fingers. Ice sprouted out of the ground with every impact, nudging Ube into a sitting position with far less precision than what could have been possible. I could argue that it was just a result of me not using ice nearly as much, but in reality I just didn't really care that much.

"You know, if you ask me," I mused, poking at Ube with a broken chair leg my tail had found, "I'd say the years have been kind to him."

A harsh slap echoed behind me, startling me out of the patterns I'd been carving into the ice. I whirled around, chair leg held out before me like a sword, only to see Junior, hands clasped behind his back as he stood tall and stared me down.

An angry red mark, about the same size as his hand, stretched out across one side of his face.

"Uh, boss?" The remaining glass held in the stylish frames adorning his face crumbled away. I could see the corner of one eye twitching, now that my vision wasn't being obscured by his tinted lenses. The stare never abated. "You alright?"

Slowly, a smile bloomed across his face. It was a lovely sight, all full of teeth and shuddering muscles and the glint of bewilderment in his eyes. I smiled back, though even with all the effort I put into it, I couldn't even get close to the amount of pearly whites that he was showing off.

Not that I really had any pearly whites to show off. Oral hygeine wasn't typically a priority in the wilderness, nor did the package deal come with dental. At least I could use my tail to shave, sloppy as it was.

"Yeah, great." Junior was quite good at talking through his teeth. Maybe he got a lot of practice? "I figured out what I'm gonna do with you."

I perked up at that. Finally, something else to do!

"Oh, neat! What is it?"

Junior drew in a breath, somehow finding a way to straighten his spine out even more. Before he could expell all that air and maybe drain some of the purple that had crept into his face, something shuffled on the ground behind me, followed by a drowsy, female voice.

"Ugh, the hell hit me… Hey Junior, what-"

The scream that erupted was almost loud enough to knock my hearing out. It held on for dear life, just barely managing to make it through, and I couldn't really complain about it whatsoever, because it was all my fault.

"IS THAT A _**BODY!?**_"

...Whoops.


End file.
